2. It's home to the 'World's Most Luxurious
Hotel'

The
Burj Al Arab is often referred to as the world's only
seven-star hotel, and it
calls itself the
"World's Most Luxurious Hotel." With 202 obscenely luxurious
duplex suites, guest amenities like 24-carat gold iPads and
private butlers, a helipad, four pools, and airport
transfers in a Rolls Royce or helicopter, it's not an
overstatement.

The Burj Al Arab is called the "World's Most Luxurious
Hotel."Jumeirah
Hotels

4. One night in a Dubai hotel suite costs more than most
people's annual rent

A night in the "cheapest" one-bedroom suite at the Burj Al Arab
will set you back at least a cool $1,360 (or more than
$2,000, depending on the season) — a steal compared to the
$23,000 a night for its most opulent suite, the Royal Suite.

5. Brunch comes with butler service and endless bottles
of super expensive champagne

Champagne brunch in Dubai is the real deal. Many of Dubai's
hotels, despite being a Muslim state, have decadent brunches on
Fridays and Saturdays, with endlessly flowing high-end champagne
— Moët, Bollinger, Laurent Perrier — alongside abundant buffets
full of lobster and caviar.

The most decadent brunch is at
The Royale Brunch at Imperium, part of the Jumeirah Zabeel
Saray, which costs $680 per person. You'll be handed your very
own bottle of Dom Perignon (which usually costs about $200 a
bottle), as well as a private butler.

At the Madinat Jumeirah, however, you'll be handed a map, as
Friday brunch is spread over three restaurants and 37 cooking
stations, covering the entire ground floor of the Al Qasr hotel.
Brunch here, with free-flowing Moët, will set
you back around $200 a head.

6. The city boasts the tallest building in the world —
which in turn boasts four world records

Burj Khalifa is the
tallest building in the world.Flickr
/ Royston Kane

Dubai is also home to the world's tallest building. The Burj
Khalifa is 2,722 feet tall (to put it into perspective, the
Empire State is less than half that, at a diminutive 1,250
feet sans antenna) and boasts 160 floors. Its observation deck
sits at 1,821 feet and is
the highest observation deck in the world, giving the
building its fourth Guinness World Record, along with
records for the world's tallest building, tallest man-made
structure, and highest restaurant.

7. It's also building the biggest airport in the
world

Dubai's Al Maktoum International Airport is
undergoing a massive $32 billion expansion that will make it
the world's largest airport, at a whopping 54 square miles.
The mini city is expected to be able to handle more
than 120 million passengers a year once completed in six to eight
years.

8. Dubai created its
own islands with insane beachfront properties

Only in Dubai could someone decide to simply build a bunch of
islands and then
import enough sand to fill the Empire State Building 2.5
times — and that's just the Palm Islands (on the left).
Billed as the "Eighth Wonder of the World," it is the world's
largest man-made island, cost $12.3 billion to build, and is made
of 3.3 billion cubic feet of sand.

Even more outrageous is The World, an archipelago of islands that
literally forms a map of the world, allowing the insanely rich to
"buy a country."

10. But it's building an even bigger mall

Why have the world's biggest mall when you can have the world's
two biggest malls? Since there's no competition quite like
competing with oneself,
Dubai announced last year that it is building a huge
temperature-controlled "city" of a shopping complex, said to
house 8 million-square-feet of retail space once completed.
Called the "Mall of The World," the entire project will be
48 million square feet in size, and include approximately 100
hotels, a theme park, and medical tourism facilities.

11. It created a winter wonderland and a full indoor ski
resort in the middle of the desert

Reuters/Mohamed Al-Sayaghi

Again, Dubai decided to make the impossible possible by building
a ski
resort in the desert. Ski
Dubai inside the Mall of the Emirates has five runs
— the longest one being a respectable 1,300
feet — and a freestyle area with jumps and rails. But
it obviously doesn't end there, as they've created a veritable
winter wonderland complete with live penguins, tobogganing, and
ice sculptures.

12. It's also planning to build more insane developments
underwater

Maybe winning above sea-level superlatives was becoming too easy,
but Dubai has its sights set on developing what's underwater.
While it already has
underwater hotel rooms, it has plans to
build an entire hotel below the sea. The Water Discus Hotel,
designed by Ocean Technology, would consist of two sets of
discs, one above and one below the ocean. The
underwater one will contain 21 hotel rooms, as well as an
underwater dive center and bar. Also, plans for an
underwater tennis court recently surfaced.

13. Its horse races feature multimillion-dollar
prizes

Nothing in Dubai is half baked, and thus the Dubai World Cup, the
world’s richest horse race, attracts racers the world over to
compete for the grand
prize of almost $10 million — and the total prize money of
the day's nine races is $30 million.

15. There's an $817 scoop of ice cream

Scoopi Cafe in Dubai has an ice cream called "Black Diamond,"
which is made with Italian truffles, Iranian saffron, and 23
carats of edible gold. It
costs $817 a scoop.

16. There are $1,000 cupcakes

Bloomsbury's Golden Phoenix cupcake is
one of the world's most expensive sweets, clocking in at
$1,000. Each cupcake is made with Italian chocolate, Ugandan
vanilla beans, and strawberries dipped in 23 carats of edible
gold.

17. And there are cocktails made with diamonds that cost
thousands of dollars

The Skyview Bar of the Burj Al Arab hotel sells a similarly
costly drink.
Costing a whopping $1,347 per glass, the "Diamonds are
forever" cocktail is made with L’Héraud Vintage Grande Champagne
1906 Cognac, as well as Comtes de Mazeray Brut gold-flake
champagne. Oh, and it comes in a Swarovski cocktail glass made
with a diamond-filled stem, which you get to keep. However, the
most expensive drink on the menu is The Birth of an Icon, which
is basically a daiquiri made with St. Lucia Distillers Nine Cask
Founders Rum, aged Cointreau, and dehydrated gold dust that costs
an inexplicable $4,083 per glass.